1-Up!
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Easy, SS any% run
Verifier Responses
Decision: Reject
Reason: There are costly mistakes and a severe audio issue.
This run will be available for a month. PM me for a link.
Easy, SS any% run
Verifier Responses
Quote:
Haunted Castle (Oretachi Game Center Zoku series) for PS2.
This game is the fourth of six outings in Simon Belmont's quest to end Count Dracula's reign of terror over some villages of gypsies and woodcutters in an Eastern European principality most people can't locate on a map. Why does Simon have to relive this same nightmare over and over? It's like Groundhog Day, if the groundhog was a vampire bat and Chris Elliot was Medusa.
This time Simon has put on some weight and dyed his hair blue for some reason. I guess that was in style in the 80s. Also he gets to use a sword for once.
I will critique the gameplay of this run first. Haunted Castle is notoriously hard, and not in the "challenging Ninja Gaiden" kind of way, but in the "this game has horrible controls and bad hit detection and cheap enemies and now I hate Konami" kind of way. With that in mind I commend anyone who beats this game, let alone completes a speedrun of it.
There is good use of damage to save time on the first couple of stages. This can be tricky since Simon is made of papier-mâché. However, things get slower as the run goes on. This is especially true in two examples. On stage 4 a lot of enemies can be jumped through but the runner ends the stage with eleven hearts and only six health missing (hearts are turned into health when you beat the stage). On stage 5 the runner takes quite a few accidental hits despite having lots of hearts and the Stopwatch through most of the stage. I would have liked to see more risks taken and enemies skipped rather than killed. I understand this is tough because Simon is built like a linebacker and jumps like an astronaut, but it looks like quite a bit of time can be shaved off here. The game was ported to (or emulated on) PS2 from the arcade but there were four different versions of the arcade game. I believe they ported Japanese version N (someone can correct me on this) which is more forgiving in terms of damage, so I think more risks can be taken.
I timed the run to 12:59.63 seconds: 46731 frames when the first stage loads to Dracula's giant scary head dying. I estimate a run could be at least 30 seconds faster though.
Video is fine. No complaints there.
Audio is a big big problem. The runner's disc or console must be glitched, because the game plays the normal stage music for two seconds, then inexplicably starts playing the boss track for the entire remainder of the stage. This occurs throughout the entire video, and amazingly it even happens during the intro scene where Dracula kidnaps Serena. On top of that, the sound effects and music compete for volume, so sometimes the sound effects are normal and other times they are drowned out by the obnoxious, repetitive music. Haunted Castle has at least one thing going for it, excellent musical compositions, but you would never know it from watching this.
Decision: an unfortunate reject. I would love to see another run of this with the audio straightened out and some faster gameplay. The game is only 6 stages so I don't think it is asking too much for a redo.
This game is the fourth of six outings in Simon Belmont's quest to end Count Dracula's reign of terror over some villages of gypsies and woodcutters in an Eastern European principality most people can't locate on a map. Why does Simon have to relive this same nightmare over and over? It's like Groundhog Day, if the groundhog was a vampire bat and Chris Elliot was Medusa.
This time Simon has put on some weight and dyed his hair blue for some reason. I guess that was in style in the 80s. Also he gets to use a sword for once.
I will critique the gameplay of this run first. Haunted Castle is notoriously hard, and not in the "challenging Ninja Gaiden" kind of way, but in the "this game has horrible controls and bad hit detection and cheap enemies and now I hate Konami" kind of way. With that in mind I commend anyone who beats this game, let alone completes a speedrun of it.
There is good use of damage to save time on the first couple of stages. This can be tricky since Simon is made of papier-mâché. However, things get slower as the run goes on. This is especially true in two examples. On stage 4 a lot of enemies can be jumped through but the runner ends the stage with eleven hearts and only six health missing (hearts are turned into health when you beat the stage). On stage 5 the runner takes quite a few accidental hits despite having lots of hearts and the Stopwatch through most of the stage. I would have liked to see more risks taken and enemies skipped rather than killed. I understand this is tough because Simon is built like a linebacker and jumps like an astronaut, but it looks like quite a bit of time can be shaved off here. The game was ported to (or emulated on) PS2 from the arcade but there were four different versions of the arcade game. I believe they ported Japanese version N (someone can correct me on this) which is more forgiving in terms of damage, so I think more risks can be taken.
I timed the run to 12:59.63 seconds: 46731 frames when the first stage loads to Dracula's giant scary head dying. I estimate a run could be at least 30 seconds faster though.
Video is fine. No complaints there.
Audio is a big big problem. The runner's disc or console must be glitched, because the game plays the normal stage music for two seconds, then inexplicably starts playing the boss track for the entire remainder of the stage. This occurs throughout the entire video, and amazingly it even happens during the intro scene where Dracula kidnaps Serena. On top of that, the sound effects and music compete for volume, so sometimes the sound effects are normal and other times they are drowned out by the obnoxious, repetitive music. Haunted Castle has at least one thing going for it, excellent musical compositions, but you would never know it from watching this.
Decision: an unfortunate reject. I would love to see another run of this with the audio straightened out and some faster gameplay. The game is only 6 stages so I don't think it is asking too much for a redo.
Quote:
video is fine, audio issues have been discussed already and merit rejection alone imo
even if it weren't for having to listen to the boss music the entire game i would still reject this, though. the runner does not take full advantage of easy difficulty's 1 damage from everything, and with better planning can take more hits while still holding onto hearts for key parts (such as all of level 5) through proper use of the stopwatch to avoid damage. he apparently did not know that you can prevent mummies from spawning if you use the stopwatch before the coffins appear on-screen, for example, and similar tricks work on some of the other enemies. killing the hunchback with the cross in level 3 was just ridiculous and cost a ton of time, as did not knowing that you can jump and slash the birds on platforms in level 5 (without having to stop). you can also get through level 6 with almost no damage or time lost if you memorize the bat spawns and jump slash them.
considering that the best time on the hardest difficulty is 12:22, i would say the first verifier actually underestimated how improvable this is. sub-12 may even be doable here, or not far over 12 at any rate.
so yep, this one is an emphatic NO. i would suggest not submitting again until this disc/PS2 issue is fixed...if you can get that squared away then i would like to see another try at this on easy!
even if it weren't for having to listen to the boss music the entire game i would still reject this, though. the runner does not take full advantage of easy difficulty's 1 damage from everything, and with better planning can take more hits while still holding onto hearts for key parts (such as all of level 5) through proper use of the stopwatch to avoid damage. he apparently did not know that you can prevent mummies from spawning if you use the stopwatch before the coffins appear on-screen, for example, and similar tricks work on some of the other enemies. killing the hunchback with the cross in level 3 was just ridiculous and cost a ton of time, as did not knowing that you can jump and slash the birds on platforms in level 5 (without having to stop). you can also get through level 6 with almost no damage or time lost if you memorize the bat spawns and jump slash them.
considering that the best time on the hardest difficulty is 12:22, i would say the first verifier actually underestimated how improvable this is. sub-12 may even be doable here, or not far over 12 at any rate.
so yep, this one is an emphatic NO. i would suggest not submitting again until this disc/PS2 issue is fixed...if you can get that squared away then i would like to see another try at this on easy!
Decision: Reject
Reason: There are costly mistakes and a severe audio issue.
This run will be available for a month. PM me for a link.
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